


An Ocean of Violets in Bloom

by cm (mumblemutter)



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-27
Updated: 2005-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-09 04:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rapunzel was always one of my favorite messed up fairytales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ocean of Violets in Bloom

_There is a gray brick wall that runs around Dave's house. It only reaches up to slightly below one's knee and lines the sidewalk that weaves around the compound and widens into the main road leading out to the gate. Everyone tells Dave's mother to have it taken down because accidents have happened more than once, but she always refuses._

Dave's head hurts when he wakes up, like it did whenever Chester pulled on his braid when he was younger. He doesn't know why, but he lies in bed for a full ten minutes, unable to breathe or move. He tries to tell Chester later, when he comes up to the room, but Chester just laughs. "Your hair's too long, Dave. That's why it hurts." Dave scowls and turns away from him until Chester retreats and Dave hears the door shut behind him.

On the day he was taken up there, he'd been playing alone in the garden when Chester had come up to him. Instead of pulling on Dave's braid, though, he'd shoved him down into the ground. "I hate you," he'd hissed. "You goddamned princess."

His knees scraped against the hard concrete and his head the side of the wall. He remembers his mother screaming then, as he tried to stand up. He remembers wiping blood from his eyes and seeing Chester, standing mutely next to him, face stricken. Dave had held his hand out to him and he'd grabbed hold, his hand firm and warm in the brief second that he had before Dave's mother pulled him away. The garden was in bloom, but Dave remembers nothing as bright as his blood on Chester's fingers.

Chester's father worked for Dave's mother, and on that day Chester's screaming could be heard for what seemed like hours.

When Chester visits later, he brings milk and cookies in a silver tray etched with thorned roses. And then he waits, silently, for Dave. Dave picks up the glass and downs the milk, gulping it so fast some escapes from his mouth and falls down his chin. He wipes it away, wincing at the aftertaste in his mouth.

His mother's hands used to be delicate and white, but years of braiding and combing made them hard, callused with red like a blush. "So like your sister's," she'd say, while coming Dave's hair. They didn't talk about his sister much, only that she wasn't around anymore and that it was someone else's fault, someone they didn't talk about either. Dave doesn't remember her much. Before she went away mom used to sit them both in her lap and sing to him, a beautiful clear bell that echoed with love. She'd let her hair down and it'd fall in a beautiful golden wave over Dave. He'd bury his face in it and feel safe.

But now her hair was always tied up in an angry bun, and she never ever used her voice to sing.

Dave had never known why his mother allowed him a visitor such as Chester, but she'd brought him in one day, trailing nervously behind her. "Sorry," Chester said, staring at the floor. "I didn't mean to push you down."

Dave's hand automatically went to his forehead, where the wound was just beginning to heal underneath the bandage. "It's okay. I forgive you."

His mother smiled brightly, "Well that's wonderful. The two of you play together; I'll just sit in the corner and read."

Once, his mother had been called away, some household emergency. When she came back and found them still happily playing she started accompanying them less and less, and eventually just left them alone.

Chester comes in, bearing the milk and cookies. Sometimes he brings rampion from Mom's garden, tenderly boiled and served with sauce and tea, but today he brings milk and cookies. Churlishly, Dave decides he doesn't want any and shoves the plate aside. Chester just sighs patiently and says, "Dave, drink your milk at least."

The milk tastes slightly sour, as it always does, but Dave drinks it anyway, just so Chester will go away. When he picks up the tray to leave though, Dave catches hold of his arm. "No, wait. Stay with me for a while, please."

His mother had always caught hold of his braid (even then almost to his knees) whenever he tried to chase after Chester for hurting him. He'd stand there, just out of reach, face red and panting while Dave struggled and finally gave up, allowing her to fuss over him. "Little boys don't run, Dave," she'd say, her hand curving over his cheek.

"Chester runs," he'd snap back, and her eyes would narrow in Chester's direction, which would be Chester's cue to turn around and disappear, in case his father came around and hit him for his behavior. He didn't seem to need much excuse anyway; Chester often turned up with bruises peppering his arms and legs, and occasionally his face. They never talked about them, just like they never talked about how Dave was never allowed to cut his hair.

"You're not Chester," she'd say finally. "You're better than him. You're my little boy."

Chester sits down next to Dave, and tugs on Dave's braid, but playfully this time. It still hurts though, for no reason that Dave can tell, and he winces. "Sorry," Chester says, only Dave's certain he's not.

But Dave smiles and says, "Tell me."

About the world outside. About places and things that he only vaguely remembers, and sometimes not at all. About girls, with their soft curves and perfume scent. Chester likes to talk about his girlfriend. "Sam," he says. "Amazing body." He leans close to Dave, breathing in his ear as he says, "Oh, and the way she fucks. You have no idea what she can do with her mouth. And her skin, like silk. Not as soft as yours though." Dave shifts uncomfortably as Chester caresses his cheek, and he laughs, and kisses him there, fleeting as a breeze.

When he wakes up his hair aches and his mouth tastes of something strange, like molasses but laced with bitter. Mom comes in to wash and comb his hair. Dave sits at the window and stares out into the garden as she unbraids the long tresses, until she's surrounded by a sea of bright red curls. "One," she says, as she starts at the top with her big pearl-handled silver bristled brush.

"Softly," Dave says. "It hurts."

"You keep saying that. I don't know why. And you keep getting knots in the hair, too. That never used to happen. Maybe I should cut the edges a bit. I brought scissors."

"No," Dave says, suddenly terrified. "Don't. You might cut too much off."

She frowns momentarily, but her face clears into a bright smile. "I brought wolfsbane to braid through your hair. It's July, they were almost a month late in blooming." She frowns again, unhappy and confused.

The flowers are yellow and ugly, threaded together with thin white string, but Dave doesn't say anything as she divides his hair into three and carefully braids them into the bottom half. He doesn't say anything as she whispers spells under her breath either, ugly guttural words that twist her mouth into unnatural shapes. Dave doesn't believe in magic, not anymore. "Try not to touch them," she tells him when she's done. "They'll make your skin itch."

Dave nods his head.

Mom accidentally leaves the scissors behind when she leaves. Dave holds them until the silver is warm in his hand, then hides them under a loose brick on the window ledge.

Dave likes to read, big books that his mother brings upstairs whenever he finishes the ones that he already has. The books lined built-in shelves on the walls and, when the walls ran out, he'd started stacking them up on the floor. Mom makes clucking noises about removing some, but Dave refuses to let her touch them. He's afraid that he'll suddenly want to read a passage, or a story, if the memory comes to him, and be unable to find it. He likes the stories about swashbuckling heroes that slay the dragons and save the princess, and hates the ones where evil triumphs over good. They give him nightmares; he wakes up shaking sometimes with a rapidly fading image of a monster in his head. He tries not to think about the nightmares, because he's afraid that the reason that the bad books scare him so much is because they're the ones that are real. Still he can't stop reading.

He picks up one at random and brings it to his table. The book is thick and heavily bound in brown leather. Dust lifts when he opens it, sliding his finger down one densely scripted page. He reads, _The wretch often disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet_, but falls asleep before he reaches the end. When he dreams, he dreams of white paws and black hair and running running running wild through the forest.

Dave's sitting at the window watching the garden in full bloom when the boy visits. He hears raging outside the door, Mom and Chester, and moves closer to press his ear close to it in order to hear better. All he can hear though, are frustrated sighs (Mom's) and Chester's voice, gentle but persistent. Eventually he hears the handle turning and steps away just in time for the door to be opened. "Be careful," Mom says. "He's not well."

The boy she says it to is wearing jeans and a pale grey sweatshirt. He says his name is Brad, and as he takes Dave's hand, Dave shivers. His black hair is the darkest thing in the room, and Dave thinks: I know him. I know him.

But of course, he doesn't. Brad sits on a corner of his bed, and Chester sits down too closely beside him. Their attention is focused on Dave though, and he finally falls down, gracelessly, to curl up at both their feet. Brad talks to him then, incessantly. His voice is soft but it gets louder sometimes and when he laughs, it's a deep throated sound that runs down Dave's spine like a faint memory. "What happened to your hands," Dave asks once. Brad's wearing black leather gloves, although it's burning hot inside as well as out.

Brad just laughs again and says, "I just wear them because I have to ride my bike later," but when he lifts his arms his sleeves ride up and Dave can see the skin above his wrists, raised with red bumps and faint lines like scratches.

Chester seems unhappy though. He keeps staring at Brad, and nervously interrupts him sometimes, for no reason that Dave can see. But their thighs are pressed together, and when Brad says, "Chester," softly, quietly, Chester's eyes flicker and shade, and his hand clenches against his side. Dave looks away, his chest hot and tight.

"I'll and visit you again. You wouldn't mind that, right?" Brad says when they're about to leave. Dave shakes his head mutely. Brad kisses him then, softly, on the lips. Dave gasps, but is unable to move away when a tongue slips into his mouth. "Later, Dave."

Chester looks behind as he closes the door behind him, expression blank and unreadable. Dave presses his hand to his mouth. Brad tastes like molasses, he realizes, sweet but with a bitter aftertaste.

When Chester comes over the next day he doesn't say much. Instead he kisses Dave, hard. And then he pushes him down onto the bed and fucks him. His hands undressing Dave, pressed against the inside of his thighs to push them apart, his body a hard, tense line as he drives in slow and deep. Everything's jagged and unfamiliar, and yet it echoes, and when Dave comes, it's almost someone else's name that rises to his lips.

"Dave," Chester whispers, later, kissing his lips, his cheeks, the scar that brands his forehead like a sin. "Don't drink the milk today." His hands claw at Dave's shoulders as he shudders quietly, refusing to look up at him.

After he leaves, Dave dress slowly, in jeans and a t-shirt, and then he waits. The voice is strong, and clear, and so familiar for all that he remembers hearing it only once before. "Dave," he calls, "Dave. Let down your hair." Dave moves over to the window, where down in the garden the flowers are in full bloom. Red and blue and white, Dave thinks dizzily as he lifts his braid and throws it down down down for Brad to catch. The scissors are cold in his hand as he cuts his hair slowly, shearing through russet strands and faintly rotting flowers.

Down down down, and everyone always said that his mother should have taken down that wall. The anguished cry follows, soon enough, and Dave looks down to Chester, cradling Brad's head in his arms. He picks up the milk and throws it out. It falls, a white wave that splashes and hisses on the burning blood-soaked concrete.


End file.
